AMERICA ADRIFT
by Tal Brooke
written in 1992
written in 1992
As we plunge through the 1990s to cross the year 2000. let us assess where we have come as a nation in the last 150 years. One telling indicator of our 'accumulated moral and intellectual capital. would be to see how far we have gone beyond the old one-room schoolhouse and its biblically based (or, these days, “biased”) McGuffey's Reader Modern educators tell us that legions of gifted minds in the higher academy have spent a century and a half since that simpler era producing a wealth of impressive facts and discoveries. from quasars to lasers. Great universities have taken on the great questions, (Issues of the whys and wherefores of existence have had a more open-ended “back-seat” treatment). Today's education has inherited this mountain of accumulated knowledge. To fully appreciate where modern advances have taken us. we should consider what high school students were studying 150 years ago in some sample classroom reading:
If you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures; to question the reality and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding, whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice; whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue and hoisted the flood gates of immorality and crime. I need not say that when people have once done this, they can no longer exist as a tranquil and happy people. Every bond that holds society together would be ruptured; fraud and treachery would take the place of confidence between man and man, the tribunals would be scenes of bribery and injustice: avarice, perjury, ambition, and revenge would walk through the land and render it more like the dwelling of savage beasts, than the tranquil abode of civilized and christianized men. - McGuffey's Reader 1854
Naturally today's liberated students would jeer at such moralistic absolutism. When I last wrote you in the early summer I shared that “my deep sense is that we are entering an era of escalating. perhaps irreversible, anti-Christianity.” I also noted that the opposition will not play fair and that we must be strategic and effective. Now that our national government is about to have a radical changing of the guard, it is clear that change is all around us — change that seems determined to veer away from the old America into uncharted territory.
If America has been hospitable and respectful to Christians in the past, outward indications are that we can no longer expect this tolerant mood to continue. The new America that is emerging from the quiet cultural revolution taking place all around us is rapidly banishing Christian evidences from public display, from crosses and manger scenes to prayer and bibles, while opening the way for an alien anti-morality.
In the McGuffey's Reader era of the 1800's. slovenliness, whispering in class, and lack of attention headed the list: of high school delinquencies. Today's list of high school delinquencies include cocaine abuse in the school, gang rape (bathrooms, empty classrooms, gyms), and killing or maiming teachers and fellow students.
McGuffey's era first grade classroom material was as innocent as snow. Compare that with first graders in hundreds of schools in Greater New York City who by the late fall of 1992 were railroaded through an “anti-bias curriculum” to read books introducing them to the lifestyles and realities of homosexuals and lesbians. Required reading has included illustrated children's books that superficially resemble the old DICK AND JANE series but have such titles as DADDY’S ROOMMATE & HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Daddy and his male lover roommate are portrayed smiling in bed together while little Johnny looks on in an understanding” way. These tender first graders cannot even read or do simple arithmetic yet they are forced to learn about a subject that is years ahead of their own sexual development. and a form of behavior that their own nation declared a criminal perversion only a generation ago. Moral relativism has indeed reaped a swift and bitter harvest. If Christians still believe they can amble along in today's self-proclaimed “morally neutral” climate, they are in for a violent shock.
America has lived off the borrowed posterity of its once rich Christian past, and has almost devoured what little goodness remains. it is a national wound far more deep and insidious than the worst case scenarios of the cold war, when all that might happen was a fleet of missiles coming over armed with nuclear warheads. That would be a mere surface wound compared to our deconstructton from within. When a nation has abandoned its moral roots and lost its will, its devastation Is complete. Be assured that when first graders are made to study homosexuality as a required subject, we have already fallen into captivity.
Before such bankruptcy of our spiritual capital. the American church had a comfortable pew on which to slumber when it vas not taking on the causes of its choice. Hard choices were not necessary. Its gaze might wander occasionally to brethren overseas surviving in hostile cultures. It would see these Christians living at times with more passion and commitment, perhaps even envying their apparent purity of faith and zeal, but it did not envy their hard choices. Those choices are upon us now.
But there may be a good side to this. I believe that opposition will strengthen the true church, while fair weather churchgoers, who never counted the cost. may end up vacating their once comfortable pews. Christianity with a price will have a different face, a different look in America.
In my own lifetime, I remember when America once proclaimed and practiced its Christian heritage through public ceremony. Then one day, in elementary school, I noticed that we were no longer singing “America the Beautiful” or hymns or saying prayers. Something great and noble, something good, had suddenly been erased from our lives. quietly, insidiously, leaving a tangible vacuum. After that. the lights kept going out steadily. May God use each of you in standing against the mounting waves of anti-christianity.
NOTE: This was a quarterly letter from SCP, an organization which is no longer exists, but in it’s day provided a lot of good material on cults. The introductory paragraph, the final salutation, and a “p.s.” appealing for financial support are all that have been omitted. The letter is “as is” with those exceptions which were omitted because they have nothing to do with the issues discussed. Carl Knott
If you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures; to question the reality and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding, whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice; whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue and hoisted the flood gates of immorality and crime. I need not say that when people have once done this, they can no longer exist as a tranquil and happy people. Every bond that holds society together would be ruptured; fraud and treachery would take the place of confidence between man and man, the tribunals would be scenes of bribery and injustice: avarice, perjury, ambition, and revenge would walk through the land and render it more like the dwelling of savage beasts, than the tranquil abode of civilized and christianized men. - McGuffey's Reader 1854
Naturally today's liberated students would jeer at such moralistic absolutism. When I last wrote you in the early summer I shared that “my deep sense is that we are entering an era of escalating. perhaps irreversible, anti-Christianity.” I also noted that the opposition will not play fair and that we must be strategic and effective. Now that our national government is about to have a radical changing of the guard, it is clear that change is all around us — change that seems determined to veer away from the old America into uncharted territory.
If America has been hospitable and respectful to Christians in the past, outward indications are that we can no longer expect this tolerant mood to continue. The new America that is emerging from the quiet cultural revolution taking place all around us is rapidly banishing Christian evidences from public display, from crosses and manger scenes to prayer and bibles, while opening the way for an alien anti-morality.
In the McGuffey's Reader era of the 1800's. slovenliness, whispering in class, and lack of attention headed the list: of high school delinquencies. Today's list of high school delinquencies include cocaine abuse in the school, gang rape (bathrooms, empty classrooms, gyms), and killing or maiming teachers and fellow students.
McGuffey's era first grade classroom material was as innocent as snow. Compare that with first graders in hundreds of schools in Greater New York City who by the late fall of 1992 were railroaded through an “anti-bias curriculum” to read books introducing them to the lifestyles and realities of homosexuals and lesbians. Required reading has included illustrated children's books that superficially resemble the old DICK AND JANE series but have such titles as DADDY’S ROOMMATE & HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Daddy and his male lover roommate are portrayed smiling in bed together while little Johnny looks on in an understanding” way. These tender first graders cannot even read or do simple arithmetic yet they are forced to learn about a subject that is years ahead of their own sexual development. and a form of behavior that their own nation declared a criminal perversion only a generation ago. Moral relativism has indeed reaped a swift and bitter harvest. If Christians still believe they can amble along in today's self-proclaimed “morally neutral” climate, they are in for a violent shock.
America has lived off the borrowed posterity of its once rich Christian past, and has almost devoured what little goodness remains. it is a national wound far more deep and insidious than the worst case scenarios of the cold war, when all that might happen was a fleet of missiles coming over armed with nuclear warheads. That would be a mere surface wound compared to our deconstructton from within. When a nation has abandoned its moral roots and lost its will, its devastation Is complete. Be assured that when first graders are made to study homosexuality as a required subject, we have already fallen into captivity.
Before such bankruptcy of our spiritual capital. the American church had a comfortable pew on which to slumber when it vas not taking on the causes of its choice. Hard choices were not necessary. Its gaze might wander occasionally to brethren overseas surviving in hostile cultures. It would see these Christians living at times with more passion and commitment, perhaps even envying their apparent purity of faith and zeal, but it did not envy their hard choices. Those choices are upon us now.
But there may be a good side to this. I believe that opposition will strengthen the true church, while fair weather churchgoers, who never counted the cost. may end up vacating their once comfortable pews. Christianity with a price will have a different face, a different look in America.
In my own lifetime, I remember when America once proclaimed and practiced its Christian heritage through public ceremony. Then one day, in elementary school, I noticed that we were no longer singing “America the Beautiful” or hymns or saying prayers. Something great and noble, something good, had suddenly been erased from our lives. quietly, insidiously, leaving a tangible vacuum. After that. the lights kept going out steadily. May God use each of you in standing against the mounting waves of anti-christianity.
Tal Brooke, Chairman/President of SCP (Spiritual Counterfeits Project)
NOTE: This was a quarterly letter from SCP, an organization which is no longer exists, but in it’s day provided a lot of good material on cults. The introductory paragraph, the final salutation, and a “p.s.” appealing for financial support are all that have been omitted. The letter is “as is” with those exceptions which were omitted because they have nothing to do with the issues discussed. Carl Knott
